


night hour

by samalane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Sheith Week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalane/pseuds/samalane
Summary: Coming back together is a difficult thing, after all.





	

They don’t talk about how it was before, at the Garrison. They don’t talk about the nights spent together, sometimes in Keith’s room, when his roommate was gone, mostly in Shiro’s, who’d been gifted with the privacy of a single. They don’t mention the long nights spent on the roof of the Garrison, camped out in the middle of the desert, at the old shack they found one weekend while exploring the endless expanse of the desert. Not about the way they’d lean against one another, searching for solace. Nothing about the team they made, the way they flew together, the way they sparred together: unstoppable, unbeatable.

They don’t talk at all, really.

There’s a sense of silent recognition regarding their history. Everyone seems to know that Keith and Shiro used to be just that: Keith and Shiro. Inseparable. A team. Nobody knows the depth of it, but even Allura and Coran seem to be aware of the fact.

Whatever they were, it’s nothing but a memory now.

Keith knows, logically, rationally, that it will take time for things to return to the way they were, if they ever do. He knows that Shiro went through hell, and that whatever their relationship had been on the cusp of cannot compare to the torment of his captivity. It’s only to be expected, Keith tells himself. Shiro barely remembers his time spent as a prisoner, he still has flashbacks, prowls the halls at night when he can’t sleep.

Keith doesn’t expect things to return to how they were.

He just wishes —

It’s nothing, he tells himself, watching as Shiro smiles at Pidge and lays a hand on her shoulder. As he grins at Hunk and Lance, and then at Keith, friendly but not —

_Nothing_ , he tells himself again.

—

Fresh out of high school, graduated early after years of endless torment at the hands of older, bigger, crueler children, Keith enlists with the Galaxy Garrison. Could have gone to university, the social workers said, could have done anything he wanted, with marks like his. But he’d hated school, had only put the in effort to get out of the system faster, to move on quicker, to take control of his life sooner rather than later.

University, then, was out. And what else was a sixteen-year-old high school graduate supposed to do?

His choices were limited and the stars, at least, sounded promising.

He’d thought Galaxy Garrison (full tuition, living expenses paid, four years of certainty, most definitely a fighter pilot, they told him, with skill like his) would provide him with the freedom he’d craved since the day he’d been placed in his first foster home. Thought that, for the first time, he’d made a solid, major decision concerning his life. Thought he’d taken control over his life, only to realize he’d handed it right over into the hands of his superiors.

It wasn’t terrible, really. He’d managed eight years living under other people’s rules already. Another four — enough time to gain both military training and a post-secondary education, to figure things out, figure _himself_ out — and he’d reassess.

He had, after all, made the decision himself.

—

Takashi Shirogane is three years older than Keith and the star of Galaxy Garrison. He’s a prodigy, ace pilot, dedicated student. He's kind to everyone and the absolute favourite of all the teachers. Takashi Shirogane is the kind of boy who’s _going places_ , who’s got everything going for him, who breezes through life with so little effort that it makes Keith sick with envy.

Takashi Shirogane is a teaching assistant for one of Keith's classes and has taken an unnatural interest in Keith and his piloting abilities.

He isn’t sure what to make of this.

“Come sit with me,” Shirogane says after Keith’s third class with him. They’re in the mess hall, lunch trays in hand, and Keith feels himself go hot and then cold with a sudden burst of anxiety.

“Why?” he asks dumbly, defensively, and this is the reason he has never successfully made friends.

Shirogane is either stupidly kind or stupidly determined.

“I wanna talk with you,” he says with a bright smile. “Outside the classroom, as friends.”

For whatever reason, Keith is unable to keep his mouth shut. This tends to land him in some sort of trouble.

“Friends?” he asks, because, well, they hardly know one another, even if Shirogane’s marked two of Keith’s assignments.

“Acquaintances, if you like,” Shirogane says breezily. “With friendship in mind.”

Keith stares, because he hasn’t had friends in years, not since the kids who lived on his street and went to school with him, whom he’d left behind after his mother disappeared. He doesn’t remember their names any longer.

“Come on.” A large hand grips his elbow, and Keith is steered toward an empty table by a large window, sunlight streaming in and warming the seat Keith is gently prodded into.

Shirogane sits across from him and smiles cheerfully, beautifully, before taking a bite of whatever it is that’s being passed off as food today. His face contorts into a sudden grimace of disgust, and Keith feels himself laugh before he can stop it.

The smile is back then, the full force of it turned onto Keith once more, and he thinks that maybe Shirogane might not be so bad after all.

—

The issue is that Keith hasn’t forgotten.

The issue is that Keith, wild with grief, got himself kicked out of the Garrison and spent a year alone in the desert. He’d lost himself there, given himself over to the endless plains, the silent dunes, the grave canyons. He’d given himself fully to the desert, let it take everything that had once made him human and dedicated the rest of his life to Shiro. To his memory. To his death, and the truth behind it.

He’d been prepared to die out there, he remembers. Not immediately, not even in the near future, but eventually, alone and forgotten. His heart would stop its painful beating, his mind would finally fall silent, and his bones would return to the earth.

In hindsight, he was lucky he didn't die earlier than anticipated.

Shiro’s death was all-encompassing, and it had broken him right down to his very core. It shattered every last one of his brittle defences, worn thin after all his years living. He would spend days in bed, so heartsick he’d barely notice the passing of the hours. Hunger, thirst — all of it meant nothing, and all Keith could manage was to lay there, weak and dizzy with exhaustion, sick with loneliness.

It was almost traumatizing, losing himself like that. Keith had thought he was stronger than that. He’d dealt with all the bullshit life had thrown at him, dealt with the constant moving around, the abusive assholes who took in kids for the extra money, the fuckers who thought themselves smart for taking on a kid half their size. With the disapproval, the loneliness, the betrayal, the fear, the fucking _anger_ his life had instilled in him.

He’d thought he could handle anything. To have been proved so thoroughly wrong had been a terrifying realization.

So that’s the issue. That after everything, Keith was made to face his own humanity, his fragility. That he mourned Shiro every fucking day he was out in the godforsaken desert. That he lost an entire year to Shiro’s death, that he lost himself wholly, that he’s become someone, some _thing_ he doesn’t recognize any longer, after months of hurting, and that Shiro does not — _cannot_ know.

The memory of it still hurts, as raw and painful as an open wound. All of it still festers inside him, throbs with anger and loneliness every time Keith sees Shiro with the others because Shiro refuses to acknowledge what they had almost been, that the loss had nearly killed Keith.

It shouldn’t be like this, he thinks. Because Shiro is alive and even if he is not entirely well, he is recovering. This should be enough, and Keith knows this, because all he had wanted, back in the desert, was to find Shiro alive and mostly well.

But they don’t talk, they don’t acknowledge what was once between them, and Keith still hurts like he’s dying.


End file.
